The Breaks Between You and Me by Taiya Collier

Author:Taiya Collier [Taiya Collier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taiya Collier
Published: 2022-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

12

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Mom was an artist,” I tell my grandfather softly. “Like you used to be. I’m not sure if she ever told you. I know she was distant from you, but… she painted the house a million times. Black, blue, gold. She said she did it because she wanted her home to be as vibrant as her insides felt, which never made much sense to eight-year-old me, but maybe— just maybe, is starting to make sense now.”

I sigh. “I’m telling you all of this because yesterday I painted the house blue for her and it was the most horrific attempt, a pathetic excuse for artistry. In the end, it just made me feel lonely.”

Black was the first color she did. Which, I know, is a very questionable choice for a home you’re bringing the child you just gave birth to, isn’t it? But Mom decided black was it. And she used to retell the story all the time, so much so that I practically memorized the darn thing.

She would start like this: “And I come home, two days fresh out the postnatal unit,” and then, for some reason always at this part, she would sweep all that waist-length brown hair away from off her face and smile pridefully. “I leave you at home for the hour with your dad to go buy paint. Paint!” And she laughs to herself, her eyes all sparkly. “And what color?” She asks, even though really, she’s prompting me to ask, so eventually I’ll go: “What color?” In which her smile will widen to the tip tops of her ears, and she’ll gesture outward with her hands. “Black! All because I heard one of the nurses saying black is good paint color for nurseries!”

And then she’ll overflow with so much laughter that she can’t breathe.

But that quickly! She regains composure. And continues.

“And it takes me an hour to paint the whole thing. Your Dad said it would’ve taken ‘real’ painters days. Even weeks, if we’re being honest.” And she would shrug. “And we are. But damn, baby,” and then she would grin again. “I did justice to our walls. And I guess it paid off: we had those onyx walls for almost two years, and I think I did a mighty fine job with you— so I guess those nurses were right in the end.”

So. Maybe the black worked?

I think about asking you if the black really worked, or asking, “Is black a bad color for babies?” But I decide not to because you’ll probably tell me yourself that dark colors can probably evoke feelings of doom and gloom and should positively, most definitely, never be used to paint a room housing an infant.

After the black came the gold.

Who goes from black to gold? And how?

Well, I know how she did that one too:

She would whisper the story of the gold at night. “I had to do a jillion, billion, million coats of paint, and it took ages, waayy longer than the black, and I

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